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In 1999 a documentary was made by Anthony Thomas called “A Question of Miracles”. The documentary aim was to expose these so called “faith healers”. The faith healers it concentrated on were Benny Hinn and Reinhard Bonnke. The documentary highlighted parts of their healing crusades and showed you some behind the scene investigations.
In one of the highlighted scenes Benny Hinn says:
“Now ladies and gentlemen would you look at me eye to eye please and listen carefully to what I am going totell you. Right after the year 2000 begins tragedies will hit in the world, financial disasters will hit and only those who have been giving to gods work will be spared. Increase your faith, increase your seed and store up for the future, so that when these tragedies hit on earth you will be spared.
Now I am gonna ask all the ushers to stand and pass the envelopes toeverybody here. Now you can make cheques payable of course to Benny Hinn ministries, if you are using your credit cards make sure to put your name, your account number, your expiration date and sign where it says signature.” 318
The documentary crew follow Reinhard Bonnke during his Christian Crusade in 1999, Benin City, Nigeria.
Narrator: “While some are called forward so that bonnker can demonstrate his miracles, below stage a heart breaking scene begins to unfold as the sick and the maimed are auditioned for their performance value. “
Miracle Auditioner: “We want miracles, we want healing, we don’t want somebody that wants to be prayed for to be healed… We want only those that the miracles have been performed already.”
Miracle Auditioner: “Can you see with that eye?“
Actor: “Yes”
Miracle Auditioner: “Now close the good one.”
Narrator: “An old man desperate to prove he can see, but on investigating we found he was never blind.” 318
The narrator then mentions at the Benny Hinn crusade in Portland, Oregen 76 miracles were performed on stage. The narrator then states that they asked from Benny Hinn Ministries for as many names and addresses as possible so they could make independent assessments on these miracles. 13 weeks later Benny Hinn ministries provided 5 names. The narrator then says they followed these cases for a year. The evidence showed that no healing had taken place. 318
Reverend Joseph C. Hough states “These are people who have come there just hoping that what they are going to hear is true, they know before they come what they are going to hear. They watch this man on television. They’ve heard about him and you look at their faces and you see their hands lifted up, looking up towards the sky praying, mumbling prayers and you just hurt for them. It breaks your heart to know that they are being deceived because they genuinely are hoping and believing and they’ll leave there thinking that if they didn’t get a miracle it’s because they did not believe.” 318
Rabbi Harold S. Kushner says “… To tantalise the blind, the lame, the dying, the afflicted, the terminally ill, to dangle hope before parents of a severely afflicted child is an indescribably cruel thing to do. And to do it in the name of God, to do it in the name of religion I think is unforgivable.” 318
“The anointing, to personal charisma and well-tried techniques of crowd manipulation, hinn adds another dramatic ingredient … throwing people over by the power of suggestion is in fact an old hypnotist trick” The documentary then shows the similarity between Hinns technique and a professional hypnotist technique.
The narrator tells Benny Hinn that they showed the footage of Benny Hinns events to a professional hypnotist and the professional hypnotist said “this is something we do every day and Mr. Hinn is a real professional.” 318
In 2011 Derren Brown (renowned mentalist and illusionist) created a documentary called “Miracles for Sale” to reveal the faith healers tricks that they use in their “healing crusades”.
In the documentary Derren Brown states “I think that they (the faith healers) are using the same tricks that hypnotist and magicians and phoney psychics use to manipulate an audience and despite what they claim no healer has ever been able to ever produce a single piece of evidence for a single miraculous healing ever having actually occurred. But despite this they still fill huge venues not just in America, but in the UK and all over the world and they the top ones are multi-millionaires. And what upsets me most is when they blame their victims for not having enough faith for when they find nothing’s changed.” 319
Derren Brown continues later on “A stage hypnotist and a faith healer may seem to be a world apart but there are some key similarities. A stage hypnotist puts his volunteers into a suggestable state with an induction at the beginning of his act. At a faith healing event the same effect is achieved in directly. Throughout the course of the service constant shifts from upbeat to meditative music and chanting put the congregation into a trance like state. By repeating trigger phrases as with these examples (“Fire”) with the renowned Benny Hinn, a faith healer can then create amazing scenes of mass hysteria much the same way a stage hypnotist can get his volunteers to perform all manner of out of character stunts”
“The people you see being healed at these events are selected by the faith healers teams … who bring them up on stage to present them to the healer” 319
“But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.” Deuteronomy 18:20 NIV
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